Information System have played an increasingly visible role over the past several years in improving the competitiveness of business. More than just tools for handling repetitive tasks, they’re used to guide and advance all of a company’s daily activities. Integrated management software is today very often a key source of significant competitive advantage.

For this you need a common language for shared references, policies and communication. An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system makes the ideal platform for this common reference point.

Risks and integration costs are important barriers to all the advantages you gain from such system. That’s why today, few small, and medium sized companies use ERP. In additional, the larger ERP vendors such as SAP, Microsoft and Oracle haven’t been able to reconcile the power and comprehensive cover of an ERP system with the simplicity and flexibility wanted by the users. But this is exactly what small and medium enterprises looking for.

To make an ERP system fully available to small and medium enterprise, cost reduction is the first priority. Open source software makes it possible to greatly reduce development costs by aggressive reuse of open source software libraries; to eliminate intermediaries (the distributors), with all of their expensive sales overhead; to cut out selling costs by free publication of the software; and to considerable reduce the marketing overhead.